“The Magic Mountain” – 100 Years

“The Magic Mountain” – 100 Years: Let us celebrate with you

“The Magic Mountain” was published exactly one hundred years ago. We are celebrating this anniversary with a wealth of inspiring events and activities centred around Thomas Mann’s novel – at home and abroad, with films, readings and a proper celebration.

The “Magic Mountain”, published in 1924, is one of the peaks of world literature: in both the literal and figurative sense. Set in a lung sanatorium in the alpine scenery of Davos, the novel brings together a variety of curious characters. We listen to discussions about medicine and philosophy. We experience the outbreak of the First World War, which makes all these discussions seem null and void. At the centre: Hans Castorp, a young engineer, whom we accompany on his journey from the lowlands of Hamburg to the high mountains of Switzerland. The novel is also a peak work in terms of its linguistic design and, not least, its scope: Mann’s masterful composition comprises no less than 1100 pages and is full of allusions to various discourses such as philosophy, technology, politics, psychoanalysis and music.

How do we read the novel today, and what does “The Magic Mountain” still have to tell us? We invite you to explore and discover its literary world.

Literature meets technology: videos for the “Magic Mountain” anniversary

To mark the anniversary, the Thomas Mann Archive is producing a video series that places "The Magic Mountain" in the context of ETH Zurich and demonstrates its contemporary relevance. Documents from the archive's own holdings and images of historical sites form the background against which experts take a new look at the epochal novel.